This post was due since long time, but lot of things happened in the country that made these things very insignificant. Here goes..
Last time I had a potato plant grow
ing like any other in a pot and me being the impatient kind, I dug it up little too soon and I ended up with 3 fairskinned potatoes 
. Then I looked up the web to know the way it should be done and I set out to do exactly the same way.
Potatoes belong to the same Family as that of Tomatoes. Interestingly they start from tubers and not seeds.
Chitting:
“Chitting” is the term that is used for the process of sprouting potatoes. There are several pages on the web showing how to chit a potato. I am not going to go into details on that since ‘I’ didnt chit the potatoes I planted. It was my friends mom. I went to their house kitchen and Voila! a bowl full of potatoes with sprouts eager to see the world and needless to say what happened next. Those fellas ended up in my garden and I skipped the chitting part.
Planting:
I potted these potatoes with sprouts into 4.5 inch pots and with in 3 days the plants showed up. The mix was peat, perlite and sand mixed. They had such a vigor and strength that I never had to fertilizer even a bit. The root system was also well developed. I was amazed by the amount of food stored inside the tuber for plant growth.
Date: Nov 2nd 2008.
Roots:
. I transplanted the plants at this stage to polythene sacks(mostly the ones that manure comes in). Pictures of the same are below.
Date : Nov 6th 2008
I started out with just 6 inches of soil mix and planted these plantlets. As they grew I added more soil. Now the bags are a little more than 2 feet. Boy! thats lots of mix.
Date: Nov 8, 2008
This is what they looked like once done. Date: Nov 8, 2008
Grown plants with flowering buds.
Date: Dec 7th 2008.
And the entire battalion.
After it had flowered, I learnt from the web that there will be some early potatoes that would have formed. I did a test poke into the soil to a depth of 3-4 inches and Oops…. My fingers felt something that feels like potato… It better be one
Harvest:
Its not time for harvest yet. The sign for maturity is yellowing of leaves and plants die back ( or my running out of my patience.. which is usually the case). Will update this blog once i harvest those tubers….
More later.
gg
Chandramouli said,
December 7, 2008 at 4:19 pm
wow gg! Sounds exciting! I’ve always wanted to plant potatoes but looking up in the web, I see many warning sings screaming ‘disease-prone’ and I held myself back, but seeing your beautiful ones, I’m once again reminded of the seed potato lying abandoned in a corner in my refrigerator… Hmmm…. Something’s going on in my mind now
geekgardener said,
December 7, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Hi Chandramouli,
Go right ahead with what goes on in your mind now!!
. I cannot right now comment on the harvest as I havent done any but I can definitely tell you how carefree it is to grow them ofcourse you need to keep filling (or hilling as it is popularly known) as the plant grows and other than that. I didnt do anything specifically for potatoes. So why waiting .. Go chitting….
gg
Ewa said,
March 17, 2009 at 11:02 am
Hi, This is great potato growing tutorial. Idea with growing them in bags is excellent – I feel like doing same thing!
Do you mind if I add you to my blogroll?
Thanks for sharing!
Ewa
geekgardener said,
March 17, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hi Ewa,
Yeah growing in bags is a money saver too. I was a little impatient with mine and got a little less harvest. Please share the results of your growing..
you can add my blog by all means to your blogroll. Its a pleasure.
happy gardening
gg